Yet another prize I didn’t enter for is the Prize Pictet, for which the short list of photographers has recently been announced: Benoit Aquin, Edward Burtynksky, Jesus Abad Colorado, Thomas Joshua Cooper, Sebastian Copeland, Christian Cravo, Lynn Davis, Reza Deghati, Susan Derges, Malcolm Hutcheson, Chris Jordan, Carl De Keyzer, David Maisel, Mary Mattingly, Robert Polidori, Roman Signer, Jules Spinatsch and Munem Wasif.
In fact none of them entered as you cannot do so, but they were all nominated by a “global nominations panel of 49 leading experts in the visual arts, from six continents” which “made over 200 nominations from 43 countries” from which the seven judges selected the 18 names above.
In fact exactly the kind of process that fills me with intense gloom about the future of our medium, although there are people among the two carefully selected groups I admire and even a few whose judgement I might respect (and even a few I know.)
This is apparently the ‘Premier Photographic Award in Sustainability‘ although I’m not entirely sure what they mean by this, and even less so by their claim “Pictet is a leading wealth and asset management group worldwide, which aims to be grounded on sustainable business principles for the environment, society and corporate governance.”
Of course there have been other photographic attempts to look at issues related to sustainability. At the end of last year I exhibited work as a part of Foto Arte 2007 in Brasilia, and the theme of that very extensive festival was “Nature, the Environment and Sustainability.” You can see more about the work I took there, and also read about some of the themes of the lecture I gave there in the posts ‘Under the Car‘, Garden Suburbs and Garden Cities and Architecture and Urban Landscape photography.
Elsewhere on the blog you can also find some of my posts about my experiences in Brasilia, as well as some of the shows from FotoArte 2007 that I was able to see, and on My London Diary the full set of images I showed in Brazil, as well as some of my pictures from Brasilia.
Of course I had no expectation of being nominated for the Prize Pictet, but it is perhaps a little surprising that (unless my memory is wrong) not a single photographer from the very long list of those who took part in that major international festival on the topic is included in the short list.